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TRAVEL ADVISORY: CORRESPONDENT'S REPORT

By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

Published: March 14, 1999

WEIMAR, Germany—
THERE are times when Bernd Kauffmann looks a little worn down. And for good reason: How would you like to be responsible for staging a world-class cultural program in a small city whose legacy ranges from Goethe to Buchenwald?

Since 1985, the culture ministers from each of the 15 countries in the European Union have selected a city to be Europe's ''culture capital'' for a year. This year they selected Weimar, and Mr. Kauffmann is the city's chief organizer behind an extraordinary series of concerts, plays and art shows.

But few cities carry a more searing mix of legacies than this town of 60,000 residents in the former East German state of Thuringia. In its golden age during the 18th century, the city became a magnet for some of Europe's greatest writers and composers. Its most famous resident was Goethe, whose epic play ''Faust'' immortalized the story of one man's bargain with the devil. Weimar also attracted the poet Schiller, the composer Franz Liszt and Walter Gropius, founder of the revolutionary Bauhaus school of architecture .

In 1919 the city was the birthplace of Germany's ill-fated attempt to forge a democratic republic -- an attempt that came crashing to an end 22 years later when Hitler came to power. Under Hitler, Weimar became a way station for trains taking Jews and other prisoners to the death camp at Buchenwald, just five miles outside town.

Buchenwald, where 60,000 people died under Hitler and 8,000 more during the Russian occupation immediately after World War II, has been preserved as a museum and memorial to the Holocaust.

All of that is now entwined with this century's other great turmoil: more than four decades under a Communist regime that finally ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

This year city officials are trying to weave these painful threads together and reclaim Weimar's heritage. After 40 years of deterioration under the East German regime, the city's winding streets and historic buildings have been lovingly restored. Cafes, bookstores and parks now beckon, while theaters and libraries attempt to breathe new life into the old culture.

The central focus of the 1999 celebrations will be Goethe's 250th birthday, which falls on Aug. 28 but is being commemorated all year long. This year also marks Schiller's 240th birthday, the 80th anniversary of the Weimar Republic and the 10th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The German Government has spent more than $700 million in the past two years fixing up this ancient college town. (In addition to the school of architecture, there is also a separate Bauhaus University.) Mr. Kauffmann has signed up artists, dance troupes, orchestras and scholars from around the world.

Not surprisingly, Goethe and Faust will dominate the agenda. The German National Theater, which has been renovated at a cost of more than $14 million, will stage Berlioz's opera ''The Damnation of Faust.'' The German choreographers Ismael Ivo and Marcio Aurelio are preparing a dance performance called ''Mephisto.'' There will even be a rap version of ''Faust'' and a multimedia show called ''F@ust: Version 3.0.'' An exhibition of Goethe's drawings will be on display at Buchenwald.

Mr. Kauffmann will also bring in scores of other artists, including the Dance Theater of Harlem, which will perform in June, followed a few days later by the American blues singer Taj Mahal and Wynton Marsalis. Symphony orchestras from Tokyo, Moscow, Tel Aviv, Budapest and of course Germany will pass through as well. Israeli and Palestinian musicians will get together in a 10-day workshop with the hope of forging a permanent orchestra. And in the shadow of Buchenwald, in what is being called the first joint performance by a German and an Israeli orchestra, Zubin Mehta will direct a Mahler concert.

It is an impressive lineup. But Weimar remains a small town that would be poverty-stricken if it weren't getting huge infusions of money from the federal government in Bonn.

When Mr. Kauffmann's organization, Weimar 99, announced that it would start taking orders for tickets to events this summer, the switchboard was overloaded and thousands of people couldn't even reach voice-mail recordings. The city received a torrent of bad publicity.

''We expected a gradual increase in the demand for tickets, not the flood of calls right at the very beginning,'' Mr. Kauffmann said. ''We don't have enough money to hire all the people we need to answer telephones. And even if we did, we couldn't do it because our telephone system can't handle that many lines.''

Weimar is also being pulled between East and West. Many residents here grumble that Mr. Kauffmann, who comes from Hamburg, is an arrogant Besserwessi, or West German know-it-all. He recently remarked, for example, that Weimar was a wonderful place if you could get out, see the world and then come back.

And some of the 1999 events have not been entirely successful. An early version of ''Faust'' received poor reviews, and a show planned by the choreographer Robert Wilson has been postponed indefinitely for want of an adequate staging area.

Nonetheless, after years of reconstruction, Weimar has regained much of its old charm. The habit of trying to separate the evil of Buchenwald from the humanism of Weimar has given way to a growing consensus that both are part of the heritage.

Photo: The National Theater in Weimar, with a statue of Goethe and Schiller in front. (German National Tourist Office) Map of Germany highlighting Weimar.

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